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About Massive MIMO Beamforming

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What is Massive MIMO Beamforming?

Let’s put them together, beamforming and massive MIMO, and we get massive MIMO beamforming. This combination of great ideas and technology allow us to go beyond what has been done in the past.  It takes all the antenna elements to work together and separately to create 3D beamforming and with over 32 elements to push data and coverage to the outer limits. Read on to learn more.

Coming soon, the “Road to 5G” book with reports on Massive MIMO, Beamforming, and more about the trend of the tech industry.

To recap:

  • Massive MIMO is where the elements in the antenna each have an individual radio head feeding them, could transmit or receive or both (TDD).
  • Beamforming is where the beam focuses the “transmit” and/or “receive” in one specific area to avoid interference from outside sources and to increase gain and throughput.

In Massive MIMO they use 3D beamforming. This focuses the beam both vertically and horizontally. It is going to allow the element to talk to specific users if they need to. It allows the RF to focus on one area while the other elements can focus on other areas. It increases coverage and densification without moving an antenna or dropping in a small cell. WOW!Get the Wireless Deployment Handbook today!

Learn more in a blog about Massive MIMO, found here, https://wade4wireless.com/2017/11/27/what-is-massive-mimo/. Then, read the blog about beamforming, found here, https://wade4wireless.com/2018/01/08/what-is-beamforming/.

How is it done?

How can they do that? With a control beam that can track where a user is located. This was brought to light with MU-MIMO, Multi-User MIMO. It allows the elements to talk to more than one user at a time. Mainly because you have so many elements that are readily available to focus on users.

Can you imagine where you have more carriers and spectrum to communicate to the UE device? Not only that, but each element can talk to a device while the next element can talk to another simultaneously. All at the same time, using different chunks of the same spectrum along with 64 or 256 QAM. It’s really amazing, so much so there is no way I can explain how it works in detail. Sorry, look at the resources below to learn more technical details.

Here we’ll learn the high-level overview. The RF will be able to be utilized more efficiently than ever because it will be focused in a very concentrated area while other elements can concentrate on their specific users.

Please note, there is SU-MIMO, Single User MIMO, I don’t talk about that here because I think the key is to talk to as many users as possible at the same time.

While Massive MIMO Beamforming is thought of like a 5G technology, it can be and will be used in LTE. They will call it LTE Advanced, LTE-A, but really it’s LTE evolution to get more throughput. It is a critical factor in getting to 5G, so it is going to be part of the NR, New Radio. (New Radio, not a creative name at all!) I think it’s important to remember that all of these advances in LTE will be a foundation of what’s to come for 5G, but I digress, let’s get back to massive MIMO Beamforming.

Massive MIMO paves the way for 3D beamforming for several reasons. First, it’s an active antenna that has a radio head dedicate do each element. This makes it exceptionally smart. Second, it has fiber and power to the antenna which has embedded antennas, so the electronics of the element allow it to focus energy the way the radio head sees fit. That means this can pick a user, focus all of its energy on that user, and slice out RF for that user, and communicate directly with that user.

Why is the last statement so important? I am glad you asked! It’s because the UE Device doesn’t need to match the MIMO of the transmit antenna. I don’t see SAMSUNG and APPLE putting in 32 or 64 antennas on their smartphones, do you? I know they’re getting bigger, but we’re lucky they put 4 in each one. Not only that, but they have to put a crapload of RF chips in each device to handle any carrier. It’s a lot to ask of a smartphone, yet we expect it today, don’t we? Don’t deny it! You would be pissed if you couldn’t take your device and use it on another carrier or maybe even in another country. Now, pile that on top of all the formats they need to communicate, like GSM, CDMA, LTE, TDD. To make it simpler for you, 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi, and soon 5G. Yowsa that is a lot to ask of that device that used to fit in your hand. Now we want them bigger, but not too big!

What made all of this possible? The OFDM format, it helped us build to what we have today. The other thing that helps is beam tracking. The beam can track where the user is and where they are going to keep the RF concentrated on that user, beam steering.

Why does it matter?

Why does massive MIMO beamforming matter? You ask some great questions! It matters because where we once thought that the antenna would just point to where we thought we needed the coverage. Then we had MIMO to allow us to pass more data simultaneously to a user, but it was really SU-MIMO passing more than twice the data to an individual user. We also had beamforming, used heavily in TDD, like Wi-Fi, to reduce interference and concentrate that low power signal to where the users were. Lower interference and increase gain to the user.

Now, on the road to 5G, we have mutated all of this to something extreme. You know, like the X-Men, we have LTE and RF superpowers! The superpower to increase coverage and densification using the antenna and the radio and the electronics to make one antenna do the job of 32 or 64 or even 128 at this time. Who knows what the future will hold.5g-deployment-plan-front-cover-3k-pixels

With beamforming you can concentrate the signal to one user, increasing the gain of that element and talk to one user while the elements are talking to another user.

Does this save money for the carrier?

Trick question! I wanted to see if you were paying attention here, so I threw in a trick question to make sure your on your toes and wearing your thinking cap.

It will cost money up front. The carriers have to replace the antennas and the radio heads. They now have to install the massive MIMO antennas. They have to run fiber and power to the antenna because it no longer has the radio head broken out. It is all one unit. They have to upgrade their BBUs, I would think, and upgrade the backhaul, (fiber) so that they can deliver 10Gbps to every macro site, maybe 100Gbps. Because now you could have 64 users all crying for 1Gbps to each device.

Up front, they have to replace hardware, install new units, and replace most everything at the cell site. Up front, it’s more money.

OpEx will increase for the backhaul. They will need more fiber, more bandwidth, more monthly cost on the backhaul

Now, it will save money in the long run. Here is what I see and it’s not as clear as I would like to make it. Please, use your imagination, will you?

The savings will be that the macro site can now supply well over 10 times the users it could before. In urban areas, this is a game changer! What does this mean? Fewer small cells to be deployed for offloading! If you have a kick-ass macro site throwing data out to many users simultaneously, who needs those pesky small cells in the same coverage area as the macro site? If you don’t think this is a thing, look at any carrier in NYC or LA, they have to offload everywhere. This can start to decline.

Coverage improves as the elements offer higher gain to individual use. This is a small gain, but the edge of the macro should see better coverage as well as throughput. Again, better handoffs and fewer small cells on the edge.

The equipment is smaller than before, and you eliminate the need for the radio head and all that annoying coax between the radio head and the antenna. You heard me! One unit, an active antenna that eliminates the need for coax at the site. This means no more Passive Modulation Interference from all those coax connections. Don’t you hate doing all the PMI testing at the site? I do, and it costs a lot of money, and there is no guarantee that it won’t happen 3 days after you leave the site. Yes, PMI sucks!

Smaller equipment at the site means that it could save the carrier money on-site rental. However, I have to tell you, ATC and CCI have ironclad leases. This is more of a pipe dream. One thing I learned is that the tower owners will NOT lower rent, they only increase rent, and they have leases so tight that Houdini could not get out of one. The thing it may hurt is the small cell leases. If the macro is kicking ass in coverage and loading, maybe a carrier could eliminate some of its small cell sites. That is a considerable cost saving when you look at the backhaul and rent. The equipment and installation are cheap, but the fiber costs are still pretty high.

Who will roll this out?

I have to tell you, the best way that I see massive MIMO beamforming rolling out is by using TDD. It’s cost effective and eliminates the need for separate transmit and receive elements. That means that if you use FDD, you would need 64 transmit and 64 receive elements in one antenna. Ouch, that just got really expensive. But wait, if you have TDD, then you could use 64 elements because the transmit and receive are shared in the same element.

Now, who has TDD in the USA? Can you guess? Go on. I’ll give you another minute. That’s right; Sprint has a crapload of 3.5GHz spectrum that is all TDD that is no longer Wi-MAX. In fact, they are migrating to LTE everywhere. They have a prime opportunity to roll out an incredible system. Will they do it? I hope so, but only time will tell.

That is why the other carriers are clamoring for mmwave and cmwave so that they can also have this technology. Does that make sense?

For this reason, I see Sprint winning this race, if they can get out of their own way. they have not made the best tech decisions in the past decade, in my opinion. Keep the deployment simple, get the teams on the same page, and for GOD’s sake, align with your vendors.

What spectrum will use this technology?

Another good question. It appears that 2GHz and up will work well for this. That means Sprint has prime 2.5GHz spectrum that aligns well with this technology.

The CBRS, 3.5GHz is well suited for this technology. While it is low power, this offers great control to allow the carriers to get the biggest bang for their buck. The lightly licensed users may not use the technology because of price and payback. Usually, private LTE networks won’t invest in anything this impressive, (code work for expensive).

It looks like the 4.4 to 4.9GHz spectrum is also ideal, good news for Japan!

Above 20GHz, where the mmwaves live, it looks to be ideal. So, when AT&T and Verizon start pushing this envelope, they will rely on this technology to deploy. Why, because the massive MIMO will allow them to cram a lot of elements into one antenna. You see, at that spectrum, the antenna elements are tiny, so they could see antennas with a high count of elements. I would think they would see 128 by 128 for almost everything. It would be a game changer, especially for fixed wireless.

Summary:

This new technology takes what the OEMs learned form MIMO and beamforming and put it together to create a new type of macro site. This makes the antenna a team player getting the signal to the end-user in the most efficient way possible. The elements of the antenna each have their own radio head and control. Using this technology to create parallel RF streams of data to the user increases throughput and loading all at the same time. That is what I call smart technology.

We have an active antenna that can do massive MIMO and 3D beamforming all controlled by a base station with even more features in it like carrier aggregation, higher throughput, more carriers, and advance interference rejection. All that and coverage improves, better densification from one BTS. WOW! We’ve come a long way, baby.

All of this so that the throughput and use loading goes way up.

I have it listed in the resources section, but a good paper on this has been put out by Nokia at https://onestore.nokia.com/asset/201377/Nokia_5G_Beamforming_mMIMO_White_Paper_EN.pdf if you have time to read it.

What can you do?

Prepare for this new technology! Come on, all the cool kids are learning it. The OEMs are relying on this as a precursor to 5G for whatever the carrier plans to use it for. What services will be needed for this? Let me count the ways:

  • RF Design – to deploy, it needs to be planned out properly to avoid self-interference.
  • Installation of new material.
  • Site engineering.
  • Commissioning, Integration, Testing, Optimization all done for the new sites.
  • Drive testing to verify it works the way we all hope it works.
  • Then, self-optimization should start cleaning up the services.
  • Then the end users will have to evaluate how awesome it is.
  • Then the carrier can start re-evaluating the use of small cells.

Resources:

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The Race to 5G between Fixed and Mobile

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Tower Safety for all your safety training!The Race to 5G between Fixed and Mobile. Which will be deployed as 5G First?

Which will be first to market, deployed, and be 5G? Which system could be the one to bring 5G to the market, for real? Will they deploy fixed broadband to provide service to homes and call that 5G or will they bring the mobile systems up to a 5G standard before the fixed is deployed?

Oh boy, a race for 5G! There is a race. The real race is between who will deploy fixed and mobile 5G systems. Of course, here in the states, the carriers are all racing to 5G, they will say they have 5G regardless of what criteria they meet. There are so many things we expect from 5G, but a new format is only part of the picture.

But hey, who am I to judge, all I want to do is deploy the stuff. It may be fixed; which AT&T and Verizon are betting heavy on. It could be mobile, which I think T-Mobile and Sprint will gamble on first. Who will deploy first?

It’s funny, but fixed doesn’t go anywhere, how would it win when Mobile can anywhere? OR, we could look at throughput, fixed generally is faster than Mobile because it’s dedicated to a few users, not many and the antenna is usually focused on a smaller area. So, when you look at those aspects, it could go either way. But I don’t mean any of that. What we’re talking about here is what will get deployed commercially first and be called 5G! We all want to legitimately call something 5G because it’s a higher G than 4G. Oh boy, isn’t 5G great? What system will win the race to the end customer as 5G and be used profitably? That’s the race I am looking at for this article. The race to the real world for a 5G system.

What’s the difference?

For those of you that don’t know the difference, here it is in a nutshell.

Fixed wireless generally is a fixed link between 2 points. It could be a point to point or point to multipoint. The end unit, the user’s device, is generally a fixed radio that provides internet connection inside the customer’s location. It does not move but stays in one location. Look at it like your cable modem in your home or your cable box, only a wireless connection.

Mobile would be a site that connects to mobile devices, like your smartphone. They are mobile and can be used anywhere there is coverage.

Fixed Wireless Overview

Let’s start with fixed, what is the business case? It’s to provide broadband to the customers that typically would rely on cable or DSL or someone to provide them an internet connection. It’s now going to be viable to have something in the cmwave or mmwave that could be multiuser and still provide over 100Mbps to a home or small business and small cells out there. Don’t forget, we still need fiber to the unit, but now we can take that fiber strand and send it to multiple homes without running fiber to the home, it would be a wireless link from the pole or building to the home or small business. How cool is that? No more wires to the home, other than power, but that could be underground.

This means the business case for broadband to the home, (BBTTH), should, in theory, cost less than running fiber to a home overhead or underground. No more trenching to every home hoping that they will sign up. Just get the fiber to a pole on the street, or a large building then shoot it to the homes.

Sound familiar, well it should. The Wi-Fi companies and the wireless ISPs have been doing this for years. Only now people want more. Most ISPs did what they could to get 1Mbps to a home, maybe they could get 10 Mbps. However, in today’s world of massive data usage, they want 50 or 60 Mbps to the home. Times have changed, and customers are way more demanding. They won’t settle for “good enough,” unless they are buying a phone from Sprint, then within 1% is good enough.

So, the fixed business case looks good if it can be appropriately scaled. However, I believe only the carriers can pull this off with success. They have the pockets and the grit to make it happen. They also have the name. Why? I am glad you asked.

There are many wireless ISPs across the USA. They have found ways to help the underserved areas. They have deployed in the license-free spectrum, ISM bands, where Wi-Fi is. This worked to a point. Many of them did not realize what it would take to install on a tower or building, in fact, many of those companies are run by IT people who ventured into the wireless carrier space. They quickly realized it takes deep pockets to maintain crews to do this work.

There are successful companies that deployed Wi-Fi internet access, like Boingo, they have done an outstanding job. They built a model around resorts and airports that work. People are willing to pay for Wi-Fi in those cases. There is a need.

The problem with WISP, Wireless ISP, is that the bandwidth service could be up and down based on weather conditions. License-free spectrum is low power and prone to interference. That is one of the issues they must deal with.

Side note – I worked for a WISP years ago and the business model was not great. The expense was high, and the payback was not what we had hoped. In fact, we made more money off IT services than we did off subscriptions. However, we did have subscribers. I soon left that venture to work with an installation and integration company. We did many installs for WISPs, many who could not pay the bills. It was very frustrating. It’s a tough business, especially when people are thinking that license-free spectrum is so valuable. The reality is, it’s free for a reason. Low power and cheap equipment make it tough to roll out, although conventional business wisdom tells us differently. You see, the services are still expensive, and if you want to go on a tower owned by a big boy, like American Tower or Crown Castle Inc, you still must pay premium rates. All OpEx expenses that can bleed you dry. I’ve worked with many companies that tried to figure it out, and many of them failed. Others pivoted into something more reliable. It’s not rewarding, and the spectrum in the US is monopolized by the carriers, the deeper the pockets they have, the more spectrum they have.

That brings me back to the fixed wireless spectrum. You can learn more here, but the spectrum to be used for this is expected to be in the higher bands, like 24GHz, 39GHz, 60GHz and 70 GHz ranges. Those spectrum ranges are almost entirely LOS, Line of Sight. The carriers are convinced that can change with technology, but I haven’t seen it yet.

All the same, look at the feeding frenzy that AT&T and Verizon went on bidding for 28 to 31GHz and 39GHz spectrum. They went crazy to acquire what they could. I would say the licenses will help them deploy across the US to homes everywhere, in theory. They must make the technology work. At least the OEMs must find a way to create proof that it works. I think the carriers already have a business case built.

They already ventured in the FTTH, Fiber to the Home, space and it was expensive. They could not lower the price of deployment like they hoped. They probably thought they could because they drove down tower work so far, but fiber deployment is expensive and tedious. This is all in addition to attaching to someone’s home, which they will sue the installer if something is messed up. It’s not pretty, but the townships, cities, and everyone else wants a piece of the pie in the order of fees, permits, and other various expenses.

Mobile Overview

Whereas the mobile case is merely upgrading the existing sites to new equipment that is 5G ready. Maybe with all the other features like massive MIMO, carrier aggregation, and so on. All the things that need to be installed bringing broadband everywhere. This should bring the mobile sites up to over 100Mbps. Why waste time on fixed if your mobile carrier can do it and provide you a device to make your home a hotspot? Just do it! If they already have one of your devices, then they may get another one and cancel their cable service or another internet provider at their home. I would! Although, I live in a suburban area so that won’t happen for 3 or more years, will it? NO!

However, this is an expectation of 5G, broadband everywhere. While the carriers may not be excited to put even more money into their sites, they have no choice if they want to compete. Your wireless carrier fee is feeding this expansion! The carriers need to deploy all that they can to remain competitive.

The wireless broadband is the way that the millennials get their data. They rely on the carrier for almost everything.

I feel if the mobility broadband happens and they try to use it for fixed, then it may overload the sites. At least with the spectrum that most carriers have. They know this, that’s why the big boys want to roll out new systems to support the home internet case. The only exception that I see is Sprint. However, T-Mobile might get creative with their 600MHz spectrum to get it into the homes of the public, if it’s enough. It may or may not be. However, if any carrier could do more with less, then they are the real winner. I think they could if they plan it properly, but I’m sure they know better, (at least they think they do).

However, with mobility systems, you could deploy a broadband solution to the home as easy as putting a device in it and setting it up for Wi-Fi. I would think something like Sprint and Airspan’s Magic box would be perfect for something like this. It would be easy for anyone to buy it and install it. Just plug it in and see if you have coverage. Awesome and easy, just what any consumer wants without going to all the trouble of fixed wireless.

Execution is the key!

I bring up execution because, with mobility, they will need to have the devices ready. When I worked for Qualcomm rolling out the FLO TV system. That was live TV to the device, a cool concept which was not a great idea at that time. However, with all of that said, a huge mistake they made was to bring the system live with only a few devices out there that had FLO TV on them. They were so worried about the system they forgot that if there are no devices, then no one can watch it. You need to execute the plan from end to end. Having a great system means nothing if the customers can’t get what you’re delivering. In this case, it’s broadband. Customers are happy with broadband. They like the idea of 5G, but if they have 100Mbps to their home, they are so much happier and could care less what G it is, or if its fiber or wireless. Just make it reliable and consistent.

Why compare fixed to mobile?

I think we need to, so we can better understand which 5G system will be rolling out first. I think the mobile system will be looked at as another upgrade and overhaul of the existing mobile system. Whereas the fixed wireless system could be a new division that brings in new revenue for the carriers. The revenue that standard ISPs and cable companies had before.

When you look at the business models, they are very different. We want to see where 5G will be applied first, in a fixed scenario or on the existing mobile system.

Fixed Pros and Cons

The pros of fixed are that it’s a new revenue stream or at least a way to cut the costs of fiber to the home. If they can run the fiber to a pole and connect 5 to 20 houses off one radio, then they saved a whole lot of money in fiber installation, deployment, and permits. Pros are cost savings and new revenue.

Cons are it’s new, and it will need to be tested, and chances are there may be problems. They are also running into the cable companies’ mainstay. The cable companies have monopolies all over the place, and the carriers need to figure out how to wedge themselves into those markets. It won’t be easy. The carrier will invest heavily to do this even without running fiber everywhere.

Pros and cons are it’s all new equipment. Why would that be both? New equipment is expensive to deploy and needs to be put on sites. That means new fiber runs, site acquisition, planning, installation and all the expenses that go with it. Even if it’s an existing site, all those details must be worked.  However, there is no legacy equipment to remove or replace. New system installs are generally clean and easy to work with when there are no customers or just a few customers. Like I said, pro and con.

Mobile Pros and Cons

Mobile will eventually become 5G, but there is more to it then just upgrading the sites. If 5G needs to be a new format other than LTE, let’s say a 5G LTE, then the upgrade is going to be costly. The system must work with 3G, 4G, and 5G. All of them. No easy thing. I believe 4G and 5G will not be a problem, but any carrier holding on to 3G has a significant problem. Let’s look at Sprint, I am not aware of VoLTE for mass deployment, so they need 3G CDMA to keep the voice going. Yes, many people still make calls on their smartphones, and I am one of them. This means that the carrier must support all the systems until the migration is complete.

Migration isn’t just about the sites. The devices, like smartphones, all have to be ready for the new system. Ask T-Mobile how many devices on the street have 600MHz in them. I would guess less than 100. Maybe ask AT&T how many devices have the FirstNet spectrum in them. Again, a meager number.

The site work isn’t all that has to be thought of for mobility; the UE devices need to be ready for the new service.

So, the pro is there will be more bandwidth at existing sites, new features, and bragging rights. All the carriers want to have 5G running on their system just to say they have 5G running on their system. I want to say that, and I don’t have a system.

The con is that the equipment at the site must be upgraded. Chances are these are all live sites, would be service affecting to customers. Not an easy thing. It may be day work or maintenance window work. Either way, chances of a live site going down for some maintenance are 100%. Chances are good the migration could be done in steps, and I see massive MIMO being deployed. That means that the antenna and RRH will be replaced with an active antenna. Good and bad. Good because the form factors and weight will be less, along with fewer coax connections. The bad is that all the leases will need to be amended, tower work has to be done, and CapEx goes up for a few years during deployment.

Another con is the UE devices will need to be sold to customers. There may be a boost when it first comes out, but the legacy users will hold on, and it will be a long time before they can sunset old Get the Wireless Deployment Handbook today!products. To see the results, users must have new devices.

Pro and cons are the backhaul and fronthaul. Carriers will need more fiber at the site. Carriers will need new routers to handle the amped-up broadband. Guess what; more backhaul bandwidth means that the fiber provider may need to light up more strands. While this sounds awesome, more bandwidth, for the carrier it’s more OpEx expense, meaning that monthly costs go up at every site. Imagine if you have 15,000 sites and the monthly cost for backhaul alone goes up to $1,000 each month. That’s $15 MILLION dollars each month, which adds up to $180 MILLION dollars a year, for the rest of that sites life. That’s going to be hard to pay for with unlimited data plans.

Who wins?

Up front, fixed will claim 5G first but mobility always wins because the devices are already in the hand of mass users. Working devices can see results immediately, even if it’s 4G LTE, if people see 100Mbps of throughput, then it’s close enough to be called 5G, even though it’s not. People want to see results immediately.

However, in the long run, both models win because the revenue streams will continue to increase for all the systems. The fixed will be new revenue competing against the cable companies. Let’s go deeper than the carriers. In the fixed arena AT&T and Verizon have the

edge with spectrum and a plan. They are testing. They already secured spectrum. They will win the race there.

Cable companies will be hurt by this new push, the way I see it. I am not sure what their defense will be, but I am sure they will think of something.

In mobility, T-Mobile is already pushing to win the broadband race. I would love to say Sprint has a chance because they have so much spectrum, but can they spend the money to make it happen? I don’t know.

I’ll tell you this, no matter which system is deployed, the fiber and router companies win. The new bandwidth demands require a lot of bandwidth. So, the FTTP, Fiber to the Premise, suppliers like Zayo and ExteNet will be winners. Fiber deployment teams also win. Fiber providers are the real winners though; they will get more money for the fiber that is out there. It will be a big win for them for years to come as broadband needs increase, or at least maintain.

Deployment teams will get plenty of business for the next 3 or 4 years. All the carriers want to deploy. They will all do design, testing, and integrations. It all has to be deployed.

Asset owners should get a lot of business, but let’s clarify. The equipment on the tower will get smaller and lighter. There should be less equipment on the towers and rooftops. It doesn’t mean it can’t do more; it just means that it is in a smaller package.–

The site acquisition teams will also get a lot of work, no surprise, they are needed at every turn for the permitting, the zoning, the planning, the lease amendments. The carriers try to bring this in-house, but they still need feet on the street in the local markets thanks to all the permitting requirements.

Summary:

The carriers are looking for new revenue streams. I think that is why AT&T and Verizon paid billions for the 24 and 28 GHz spectrum. I think they know they must break into new markets as cost-effectively as possible to build a new market up. If they already have this spectrum, that’s something to work with. It’s all good! It’s one more market they think they can tap.

The mobile market is not yet saturated. They are looking for new revenue there, such as cloud services and IOT services. That is all based on quantity, meaning they need a lot of devices to make some money.

AT&T is going to rely on the FirstNet business to happen and bring in some government money that Verizon had tapped for so long. However, remember that FirstNet participation is voluntary so Verizon may be able to keep most of its customers. That’s another article.

The race matters, but not necessarily for technology, but for the future of revenue for the carriers. They know that if they can do it first, the customers will try it just to say they are on a 5G system. Then they will work hard to build momentum.

If you want to learn more:

 

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Be smart, be safe, and pay attention!

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Tower Family Foundation supports the families of tower climbers at the time of crisis when a climber falls with financial assistance and more.

 

What is Beamforming?

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Antenna’s that can control their own beam shape, what?!? Control the beam on demand? How can that be? Beamforming is a little more complicated than that.

First, a quick, high level, history lesson.

I don’t know how familiar you are with antennas, but they must be installed correctly. You could physically tilt the antenna a few degrees to match your coverage. It’s like azimuth, that must be appropriately aligned for coverage. Older antennas were installed with a set “up tilt” or “down tilt.” They were fixed in tilt and azimuth. So, what they saw is what they heard, based on the antennas fixed pattern. The antenna pattern would determine what the antenna could hear and talk to. That was it, very simple. I know, there is gain, but for the sake of argument, let’s say they would talk to UE devices in their specific coverage area.

Then there was evolution! There were new ways to control tilt. CommScope had RET, Remote Electrical Tilt, for this purpose. I think it was a good idea, but it’s still a physical system. Basically, if I understand this, it’s an actuator that can change adjust the tilt + or – 3 or more degrees. However, it opened options to the end-user, the carriers, where they did not need a tower crew to adjust the tilt. Pretty cool!

How does it work?

Now a new type of evolution, beamforming!

With beamforming, none of the physical alignment goes away; we still need the proper tilt and azimuth to get started. Beamforming is done by very smart antennas, but the carriers did not have the corner on this technology. As a matter of fact, the Wi-Fi vendors have made significant advances in this technology. They did a great job getting 802.11 to do this. The BTS controls the beam from there so that the antenna can do its thing. Again, they all must work together to make this happen.

Where did this idea come from? Don’t let the carriers or OEMs fool you; it came from Wi-Fi. In fact, I believe one of the pioneers in beamforming was Ruckus! That’s right, the carrier-grade Wi-Fi OEM. Also, I must give credit to Linksys for putting the technology in their home Wi-Fi routers. Awesome! Thank you to Network World for making a video on this, (link is below in “Learn More” section).

Massive MIMO puts that on steroids. It takes the signal, both ways, and focuses on a user. If you have 64 by 64, then, in theory, you can focus on 64 individual users on that antenna. The idea is to hear users you want to hear at any moment. This allows the radio to talk to specific users simultaneously without sharing precious spectrum. How can they focus?  Beamforming is how they do it. They employ a technique called 3D beamforming that dimensions the signal from that element in 3D, 3 dimensions. Beamforming will focus the beam on the specific user.

Now the carriers are asking the OEMs to take it to the next level. It is the cornerstone of making massive MIMO even more useful.

You see, massive MIMO relies on the beamforming technology to make it more efficient and push even more bandwidth through it! It is a crucial factor, like carrier aggregation. It all has to work together.

Now, by controlling the beam to match the user’s antenna, it becomes more efficient in several ways. Signal strength helps, but now the spectrum stream can be dedicated to that specific user the duration of the conversation. Not only the best signal possible but a dedicated conversation with that unit for a limited time.

Massive MIMO takes this to a new level. Now the angle of delivery can be controlled. WOW! That is specific to the user based on each element. Assuming it really works that way, the antenna will have to be smart. This is called 3D beamforming, looking at all 3 dimensions. It’s steering the beam to match the end-user, basically taking a lobe that focuses all 3 dimensions to the user’s antenna. Almost like a microwave shot to the antenna. Beamforming is shaping the beam to match that of the UE device. The antenna will narrow the beam so that it is only talking to the device or devices that you want it to talk to and not the surrounding units.

That makes the antenna elements very efficient. This increases the number of devices the antenna can talk to as well as increasing the throughput to each device with a dedicated stream from each element.

Remember that the antenna will need power now since the radio heads are in the antenna and the elements need to be agile. The elements will control the beamforming, and they need to have control signals sent to them. It’s a whole new level of technology.

MIMO helps to utilize beamforming by using the radiators in the antenna to focus on specific users and not “hear” everything. That’s the key, listen to what matters and forget the rest.

By the way, if you want to get technical. Try one of the links below. I am providing a view of what a field worker would need to know. If you’re in a classroom or device design, research the details. I just need to know how it’s going to work with massive MIMO and in the real world. I am in the real world of deployment, that’s what I worry about. If you want to see more detail, I would start here, http://home.iitk.ac.in/~javeda/PhD_SOTA.pdf to learn more.

Why does it matter?

The OEMs figured out that if Wi-Fi can use beamforming so efficiently for license free, then there must be something they can use it for licensed spectrum. At first, it didn’t seem like much because the carriers are always listening for subscribers. Then came MIMO, and suddenly it seemed like a game changer.

With MIMO they would use the spectrum more efficiently, especially using OFDM. Then they would pass more data, more bandwidth in the same spectrum, awesome.

Now, enter massive MIMO, the big daddy of antennas and data throughput. It’s a landslide of data that can use the spectrum efficiently to more than 32 users simultaneously! It makes the 8×8 MIMO look pathetic!

It matters because to get the data throughput we all crave to multiple used efficiently in the spectrum we have; we need to utilize every tool we can, like MIMO, carrier aggregation, and beamforming. Although, no one will mention beamforming when discussing massive MIMO because it’s expected to be there. In fact, it’s what makes MIMO so impressive! (In my opinion.)

What spectrum does beamforming work in?

As far as I can tell it works me any spectrum. There are arguments to put it on the higher spectrum, but the reality is that I have read reports that it will work in 2GHz to 70GHz. I mean it works in Wi-Fi. What I don’t know is if it will work below 1GHz. I see that many say sub 6GHz, but I haven’t read about anyone using it below 2GHz, to be honest.

I think the carriers will get it working on all their spectrum; they need to get it rolling. Whether it’s FDD or TDD, it will be the foundation for massive bandwidth to the end-user. It’s a matter of how to reach the user.

Who will use it? (Looking at the USA only.)

You mean after all the Wi-Fi vendors? They are already using beamforming and, massive MIMO because it really helps throughput. Then the carriers are all going to use this. It means changes at the sites. New antennas, upgraded BTS systems, and even backhaul and fronthaul upgrades. This all must be upgraded.

They all want it though, they all want to serve the public. The question is how? Anyone working with massive MIMO will use beamforming. Beamforming is a hidden X-factor. As I have been telling you, massive MIMO is a huge stepping stone towards 5G evolution. Whether it’s fixed or mobile, it’s a critical component.

For instance, if you read Verizon and AT&T press releases you see that they intend to deliver high-speed broadband to homes via cmwave and mmwave. They intend to open new markets to the end-user that would, in my opinion, compete directly with any cable company’s model. Get ready Comcast! You will have competition from more than satellite.

I would like to say Sprint could do this. They have the perfect spectrum in 2.5GHz for beamforming and massive MIMO, but can they get out of their own way to deploy? Your guess is as good as mine! I know they want to do it, and they could do it, but can they execute? They may need some help.

T-Mobile has more spectrum in the 600MHz range. I think when the technology is ready and proven, (and the bugs are worked out), they will jump on this. However, will they do it in the 600MHz spectrum? I don’t know, ask John Legere, I am sure he has an answer. I certainly don’t want to speak for him, but I know once they get this technology and have faith in it, they will go crazy to get it out there to remain faster than anybody else in urban areas.

The cable companies, meaning Comcast and the others, should be eager to do this, but I don’t see them aggressively doing anything with it. I see them investing, (even more), in Wi-Fi. They must see the writing on the wall! We all see LTE throughput matching and passing Wi-Fi speeds, yet, they don’t seem worried. They even saw John Legere mention how he was going to go after them, yet, they seem very relaxed, (maybe overconfident). I don’t get it, but they’ve been successful Only a few cable companies are debt-ridden. They seem to be doing something right by staying out of the mobile arena. They have a corner on the suburban markets for sure, but the urban markets may start falling behind. They should look at history, like paging, 2-way paging, and the Tom-Tom GPS, all replaced by the smartphone. Those carriers are smart to erode other businesses, so they can have more of other market shares. I can already use my cell phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Why cable companies should pay attention.

I would heed what John Legere says about cable companies, even though Comcast’s approval rating is up. T-Mobile already proved they could change the stubborn wireless industry. He singlehandedly destroyed contracts and lowered costs and built a following for unlimited data plans. I believe that he could do the same for cable subscribers, mainly because millennials rely more on their devices than ever.

Personal story, my son was living in Ann Arbor Michigan, in a program at the University of Michigan. When he was there, he didn’t have a cable subscription. He did have an internet connection to them and Wi-Fi, but he complained about it all the time. As a young single man, he relied on his laptop for all his video viewing, movies, and YouTube. He didn’t watch TV on cable; he watches it on his TV with his iMac feeding the TV. He didn’t rely on any cable box or anything, just Netflix and YouTube. My point here is that millennials look at broadcast utterly different. They know that all you need is the internet, then you can watch whatever you want. He didn’t care how it got to his apartment if he had Wi-Fi inside and it was fast. He would have been just as happy getting it from his iPhone instead of Comcast, but AT&T was too slow and didn’t have the best coverage in that area. So, he got Comcast, and it worked fine.

The moral of that story is that the new generations could care less how they get internet access. All they want is a connection. They rely on apps to do the rest. Whether it’s entertainment or voice, it’s an app. They use Skype like we used to use a phone. It’s an app that matters.

What about you? What do you rely on? I know one thing, in the next 5 years you will rely on beamforming and not even know it. Like massive MIMO, and carrier aggregation, you will use it all, but not be aware of any of it.

What about the industry?

Let me tell you something; beamforming will be part of the new massive MIMO systems coming out. The carriers are hoping this is the last time they need to replace equipment at the site. The new equipment is getting smaller and lighter. Not to mention energy-efficient. This means that future expansions are going to be made with software as often as possible.

This will be part of the massive MIMO deployment, which means for the next 4 or 5 years, tower crews will be ramping up to get the massive MIMO systems out there. We need active antennas to see this work properly.

Carriers don’t want to pay deployment teams anymore, they have already eroded the cost to the point where many companies have run out of the industry. The industry has changed, the carriers want to reduce cost, the first place they usually hit is deployment, everyone but Verizon. Verizon is #1 in coverage for a reason; they invest where it matters. Field deployments should be scaling down after 2022, and the OEM licensing and software should be scaling up.

Side note for the field work. As training requirements went up, costs went down. To prove this point, someone compared it to a diesel mechanic that gets over $120/hour to work on an engine. That guy needs tools and training and works in his own garage. The tower climbers need their tools, a warehouse, safety training, skills training, and more tools and trucks. The only thing is, the chances of the diesel mechanic getting paid is much better than the tower crew without the travel and putting your life at risk daily. Who wouldn’t take that trade? Nuff said!

Backhaul and fronthaul are going to increase which is good news for fiber and fiber deployment. Its usage gets heavier, just like I said for massive MIMO, https://wade4wireless.com/2017/11/27/what-is-massive-mimo/. Same deal.

Fiber companies always win in something like this, why wouldn’t they?

Wireless OEMs are hoping they can build something that could be out there for over 10 years, something they can sell a license to for scaling. Can this happen, I doubt it. If they can build something that will be out there for over 5 years that can be improved remotely through software, then the carriers will be in love, until they get the reoccurring bill for the licenses they must pay. It’s still cheaper than deployment.

Antenna companies will move into this market quickly, as will their distributors. They will do all they can to make the perfect antenna. I see CommScope ramping up to meet demand along with Kathrein.

As for the carriers, they will all try to gain bragging rights. They all will try to be faster, better, and cost competitive. I would say “most reliable, but I think we all know that Sprint with their latest advertising campaign of, “Sure, they’re better, but we’re cheaper” pretty much diffuses that argument. It’s like saying; we’re #4, why try harder. Trust me, I know people that work at Sprint, and they work really hard and put in long hours. Personally, I don’t know why management would belittle the workers with that campaign, (again, my opinion).

Learn more:

 

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The foundations below do beautiful work, helping families in their time of need. Climbers often get seriously injured or die on the job. The foundations below support those families in their time of greatest need! 

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Hubble Foundation helps the families of climbers in a time of need and beyond with financial support and counseling!

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Tower Family Foundation supports the families of tower climbers at the time of crisis when a climber falls with financial assistance and more.

The Art of Solutioning (Estimating for Profit)

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I often am tasked with putting a solution together for services to deploy systems. One thing that you learn by doing this is that many times there are things you can’t foresee. That’s the Art of Solutioning. Putting together the solutions for customers that will make your company money and be competitive.

Tower Safety for all your safety training!Most companies call this estimating. They send in a guy to look at what needs to be done and build a model. Often, it’s built off of models that have already been done. We look at what we have done in the past and then estimate the parts and hours we need.

For the hardware site, it’s generally straightforward, or so we think. You have the basic system and all the interconnections to put them together. From a high level, it looks easy. Let’s look at a cell site.

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  • BBU/controller
  • Power
  • Backhaul
  • Fiber jumpers
  • Antennas
  • Power supply or rectifiers
  • Hybrid cable

Wait, how do we mount the crap?

  • Tower mount
  • Snap-ins for the hybrid cable, if it’s a tower, a channel for the

    cable if it’s a rooftop.

  • Outdoor cabinet or a rack for a shelter, room.
  • Clamps for antenna
  • Junction boxes where needed
  • Conduits where needed

Great, we have a high-level solution, what does it take to get this mounted? The services?

  • Site Acquisition to align the lease and structural with the equipment.
  • Site walk team
  • Tower crew for tower or rooftop.
  • Ground crew for cabinet installation.
  • Civils if we need to add a concrete pad at the site.
  • Electrician if we need to add power, breakers, or additional power runs.
  • Commissioning engineers to get the equipment up and running.
  • Drive teams to optimize and test the site.
  • RF teams to align RF design with actual coverage.
  • Remote networking team to integrate and bring site live into the core.
  • Network teams to add or upgrade routers.
  • Fiber providers if we need to add or upgrade fiber backhaul.
  • Microwave team if we’re adding a wireless microwave backhaul.
  • Closeout package
  • Project Management

Then we have all the incidentals that could be used up along the way.

  • Zip ties
  • Weather seal
  • Electrical tape
  • Fuel to drive to the site
  • Meals, hotels, per diem

It all adds up and it all takes a savvy and creative team not only to put it together but to come up with ways to do it better. Often, if we look for efficiencies we can find them, or at least the team in the field can help. If they follow the MOP, (Method of Process) that the carrier provides, it’s hard for them to do one thing out-of-order. While the carriers don’t want to miss anything, they build a system that is not always efficient.SOW Training Cover

For example, years ago I would go with a team and install all the hardware at a site, power it up, and commission it, integrate it, and with one cell tech, we could have the system live and on the air with one crew, a tech, and an electrician. Those days are gone, sites are more complicated, but the real reason we see the inefficiencies is because of how the quoting is done now.

Years ago, you could have a tower crew that had a sound network engineer on it and a good RF engineer on it, I know. I was on one of those teams. The carriers decided to break down each task to save money, so they did. The tower crew does the tower work. The commissioning engineer does the commissioning work. The IT engineer does the router. The backhaul team does the backhaul. Now they know what each task costs and how long it takes to do it. What they didn’t figure in is how long it takes to get 5 different people/teams to the site, travel time, per diem, scheduling, and so on. Now, is that cheaper and more efficient? But hey, who am I to judge. AT&T really built a new system around the turf management system that would break down each task and put it out to bid. They got around as much overhead as they could by hiring a team of project managers to handle the excessive workload.

Oh, the best thing we have now is the project management teams. I rely on them more than anyone. Why? Because they see the big picture. If I were to ask the tower crew, they would only know what they do at the site with an idea of what the others do. Same with the commissioning engineer, the site acquisition team, and so on. The PM usually knows what everyone does at the site, how long it really takes at the site, and what change orders had to be processed to get the site done. If they managed the project, they would also see the site acquisition, site walk, closeout, and everything in between. I rely on them heavily when putting the offer together.

We have to do the best we can to put together the best offer we can with what we know to be true at the time. This brings me to a great quote. Think about this quote by Mark Twain, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Often, we think we know everything that is going on at a job, but when we talk to the people doing it, we see new problems and issue we never knew about before. It’s a learning process. We think we know what’s going to happen at the site, good or bad, at cost are at no cost, and we are wrong!

It’s like this for so many things, product management, estimating, construction, and more.

I once supported a product development team for small cells. I did hundreds of estimations for deployment, but this story is about product design that hurt the deployment process. I pulled this story from my upcoming 5G report/book I plan to release in January along with a membership site.

Side story. A carrier wanted to design their own indoor small cell. It was interesting because they went beyond just telling the OEM what features they wanted, but they wanted a hand in the complete design. They said they would commit to over 1,000 units, but they were sure that sales would be 20 times that number. So, they started outlining what they wanted.

Typically, we would have a model and add the features a carrier wanted but in this case, they knew everything and would only commit to it if they could get what they wanted, not the model or features the OEM would recommend because they felt the OEM only wanted to sell an expensive product and did not have the carrier’s best interest in mind. Talk about paranoid, or maybe just cheap.

The cost was a factor, so, to save money they said they didn’t want PoE, (Power over Ethernet) because they wanted to cut costs on the device, (among other things but let’s go with this since it plays into my story). From that perspective, they saved a little money. Unfortunately, the carrier didn’t think beyond the device cost. Once it came to installation, they had to get power to every location that the small cell would be mounted in the office space. This was a small unit with no PoE, meaning they either had to run power cords along with CAT 5 to every location or they had to install outlets at every mounting location in the ceiling. See the problem? Think about mounting a small device in a ceiling and having to run power to every device! It cost a fortune to run electric outlets everywhere, and extension cords are ugly, and there are regulations with running AC power in a ceiling. In a ceiling, AC lines must be fire rated or in conduit or maybe both. Think about it, if someone cuts a ceiling tile and there is AC extension cord laying on it, ZAP! We have a problem. These problems happened because a carrier’s team thought they would save a few dollars on hardware, they failed to see the big picture. Sure, we tried to tell them, but they just stood firm, convinced we wanted more money out of them. Everyone’s investment money wasted! The small cell model was scrapped after about a year, and the OEM was lucky that the carrier accepted delivery on a few hundred, they didn’t honor the full commitment.

Above is an excellent example of the wrong solution, decisions based on product cost and nothing else. Real world experience matters for more than just the real world, products need to be developed for the real world, or the cost of installation will kill the product before it’s ever mass deployed. That was the case here.

Whether you’re estimating, developing a product, or providing a real-world deployment price, building the right solution matters.

Tell me, have you ever had a job go bad? I have, it happens, and we learn from it.

Have you ever had a job go tremendous and make a lot more money? I’ve had that happen too. We learn from that too.

I’ll tell you more in the future. One thing that really helps, feedback from teams and planning. When I say feedback, I mean from anyone. It could be from the installers, the engineer, the project manager, or even the closeout team.

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Be smart, be safe, and pay attention!

See Ya!

Go crazy and follow me on WordPress, Amazon, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook.

Just click and follow! Thank you!

  Get all your updates via email!

 

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Putting together your smart city tech solutions, planning, development, and more….TechFecta! Guiding you to a better plan through consulting!

The foundations below do beautiful work, helping families in their time of need. Climbers often get seriously injured or die on the job. The foundations below support those families in their time of greatest need! 

official logo

Hubble Foundation helps the families of climbers in a time of need and beyond with financial support and counseling!

tower-family-foundation-e1447069656192

Tower Family Foundation supports the families of tower climbers at the time of crisis when a climber falls with financial assistance and more.

Smart City Use Cases Report

To make all our lives easier, we needed to create a report, in the form of a book, which put together many “smart city” use cases, case studies, and development notes all in one handy book. Introducing the “Smart City Use Cases” book which is a comprehensive collection on smart city initiatives that range from transportation to broadband rollouts. It includes the wireless and Wi-Fi builds. It won’t just point out the success, but the failures. This is how we can all learn, from what’s been done and tried. Not every initiative is a success, so let’s learn from both the failures and the successes.

The Smart City Use Cases book is a collection of smart city case studies and development notes. The purpose of this book is to give you some advice and direction on smart city development. It’s for any city worker or consultant or integrator that intends to roll out in their city. The customer is not always right in this case. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Just because it’s been done doesn’t mean it’s right for your city. Think through what they end goal is then work backward from there.

Why not look at what other cities have done, how they got to where they are, why they did it, and the results? The process is as important as the end goal. The city will need buy-in from the residents and support from various departments. It helps when the integrator has a solid plan. Even with the solid plan, things change, and you need to be flexible. It pays to build one system that can serve multiple functions and support many users. It must have value, not just to the city but to the residents. It helps when it can make money or have a payback. This is another tool to help you down the path.

Get it today!

Learn from what others have done.

Why make the hard mistakes of other smart cities?

Are you looking for a partner or a cost-effective way to roll out your city?

Do you want to know how they got buy-in from their community?

Get some help right here!

If nothing else, this will save time doing all the research while preparing to go on the smart city adventure.

Learn this:

  • What is a Smart City?
  • How do you roll out broadband?
  • What have other cities done to develop broadband initiatives?
  • How can I learn from their mistakes and successes?

Here is a sample of the table of contents:

  • What’s been done?
  • What is a “Smart City”?
  • Typical Approaches to Smart City Initiatives
    • Solve Problems
    • Grant Money
    • Future Proofing
  • Smart City Initiatives
    • The US Department of Transportation Smart City Challenge
    • NYC Planning Document called One New York
  • The Smart City Playbook by Nokia and Machina Research
  • Smart City Focus
  • Smart Cities Council
  • Smart City Research Case Study Overview
    • What to look for
    • Smart Cities Council and Cisco
    • Smart City Case Studies
    • Chula Vista, Ca
    • Kansas City
    • Dallas
    • Guadalajara, Mexico
  • Smart City Project Notes
    • India Smart Cities
    • Singapore
    • Santander, Spain
    • Yinchuan, China
  • IDC Government Insights
  • Multiple Case Studies
    • Case Study Chicago:
    • Case Study Philadelphia, Pa
    • Charlotte, NC
    • San Francisco, Ca
    • Columbus, Oh, Smart City report
    • Smart City Cleveland
    • Smart City Atlanta
  • Safe City Highlights
    • Indonesia
    • Singapore
  • Safe City Summary
  • Things to Consider
  • What is MetroLab?
  • It is not a Kiosk. It is a Smart Hub
  • Smart Lighting
  • Next Century Cities Membership
  • Smart City Planning Audits
  • Mounting assets (lampposts, wood poles, telephone poles):
    • Underground assets
    • Fiber assets
    • Building tops and Towers
    • Billboards
    • Parking Garages
    • Street Furniture
    • Wireless Backhaul
    • Data Collection
  • Smart City Broadband Initiatives
    • Primary
    • Partial
    • Facilitator
  • Who buys broadband?
  • Pricing matters!
  • What about Wi-Fi?
  • Not all Deployments are a Success!
  • When Incumbents fight Back!
  • Some States Prohibit Public Networks!
  • City Strategies for a Broadband Initiative
  • Smart City “Other” Services
  • What is IOT for the Smart City?
  • Resources
  • Glossary

Get it today!

Get the right start on your smart city journey. The cities, contractors, and consultants need to work together to make ventures successful.

The rest is up to you, it’s hard work, don’t get me wrong, but this should help you see it can be done. There are failures, I point that out, but you need to take what you can and learn from it. Why make the same mistakes other’s have made when you can look at this and maybe even ask others what they did right and wrong.

It’s all up to you!

Be smart, be safe, and pay attention!

See Ya!

Please! Follow me on WordPress, Amazon, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook. Just click and follow! Thank you!  Get all your updates via email!

 

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Sign-up to get all your updates!

How do you plan goals? Now you can plan 5 Weeks at a time! The 5-week Planning Journal, (click here), available now in paperback from Amazon!

 

 

 

 

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Do you know what to put in your SOW, the details needed to get paid for milestones or job completion? 

 

Putting together your smart city tech solutions, planning, development, and more….TechFecta! Guiding you to a better plan through consulting!

The foundations below do beautiful work, helping families in their time of need. Climbers often get seriously injured or die on the job. The foundations below support those families in their time of greatest need! 

official logo

Hubble Foundation helps the families of climbers in a time of need and beyond with financial support and counseling!

tower-family-foundation-e1447069656192

Tower Family Foundation supports the families of tower climbers at the time of crisis when a climber falls with financial assistance and more.

Smart City Broadband Initiatives Part 3

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This is part three of a three-part series. This has been taken from my upcoming book, Smart City Use Cases, with Smart City Development Notes.

City Strategies for a Broadband Initiative

There are several strategies for any city to start the initiative.

  • Do you want to undertake this effort? Is this something that you need for the city? Can you build a story around it?
    1. Then do the research, get the buy-in, and lay out the options.Tower Safety for all your safety training!
  • Weigh out your options to get started? This is the first step.
    1. Will you do it yourself or gather partners?
    2. If you partner, which you probably will, who do you reach out to? Think about whom it will benefit. It could help the universities and the local businesses. Start with them first because they have the most to gain. Broadband attracts business and talent, both of which help the local universities and cities.
    3. Look at what’s been done. Are there groups, like Next Century Cities and Smart Cities Council, that you can reach out to for help? Are there other cities that would offer advice? Of course! Do some research and look them up.
  • Once you have a partner and maybe a high-level plan, then what?
    1. Will you own the network?
    2. Will you want local businesses to build out the network?
    3. Will you offer incentives, like easing the permitting process, offering city assets, or other things to promote local business to deploy?

Let’s Review

Let’s review some lessons that Gig.U taught us. I am summarizing from their Next Gen Handbook found at http://www.gig-u.org/cms/assets/uploads/2016/12/next-gen-handbook-v2.pdf to Tower Safety for all your safety training!help make this easier. (In my words.) I changed the order by what I thought would be more important. I explain what I think is important that somewhat aligns with Gig.U. I speak from case studies and my personal experience.

  • Community buy-in! This is essential to have the community buy-in and have stakeholders in the community that want this to happen. Local resources help things move and continue moving. The problem with partners and consultants is that if they don’t have the support of the community, the project will die a slow miserable and painful death. Don’t let this happen to your project! Find people and groups in the community that want this to happen as much as you do! Residents and especially local activist groups will make or break you. Get their buy-in and have them be supportive from day 1 to day 400. (Builds take a long time, well more than a few years, you will need all the help you can get to stay motivated.)
  • Local Leadership is critical! If you don’t have the local politicians on board, then it is an uphill battle. Even if you do have the local political leaders, who’s to say they will continue to support you without the local community and activist groups. Politicians are 5g-deployment-plan-front-cover-3k-pixelsfickle. They will support you for 2 reasons. One – because they truly believe in the cause that high broadband will make residents and business happy and build a new business in their community. While this is great, very few have the vision to see it through, Philadelphia is a great example. When Earthlink was building out Philadelphia, the local politicians were as fickle as the win, and they certainly didn’t commit any money to the project. When the local unions complained, the politicians turned on Earthlink as quickly as the Philadelphia wind changed. (About 10 minutes for those of you wondering.) It takes great leadership to make this go through, like Mayor Bloomberg in NYC, he has the grit to see the greater good, unlike the group of politicians in Philadelphia who chose to shut the system down after it was built and operation due to lack of interest and money. In my opinion, they had no grit and preferred to be remembered as a failed system, which they blamed Earthlink, that innovators. They are leaving the innovation up to the residents, who innovate despite the local government.
  • It’s not enough to build a plan, but you need the story, budget and goals to be laid out clearly. The truth is the budget is a guess, an educated guess, but these things always take longer and seem to cost more than originally anticipated. BUT, you need to start somewhere. Build a vision of what you and your partners expect to happen. Be honest and show people what it takes. See if they have the stomach to work through it or if they will cower away and home the local cable company gets off its ass and build something without screwing the residents. It’s your call, but it takes grit, something that most city leadership does not have. They blame everything. They say we don’t have the money or what if it fails or what if the residents don’t want high-speed internet access. Listen, get partners to pay, it won’t fail, and who doesn’t want high-speed internet access? The government doesn’t pay for their access because the local taxes cover it, so they don’t care, do they? When they get home, they probably use a smartphone they got from work, again, paid for the local taxpayer. Most school kids don’t have that luxury, yet they don’t’ care, they have what they need, screw the other residents in that city. (My opinion here)
  • It’s hard to plan and execute! Yes, it is, again, grit and a get’re done attitude is needed.
  • In most cases, incumbents will react, not initiate! That is The local cable companies normally won’t do jack until they see a clear and present competitor. Examples are Nashville, TN, where AT&T and Comcast fought to keep Google Fiber off the poles. Then in College Station, TX, where Suddenlink put $250 Million aside to upgrade the network only after they saw a clear competitor in the local government who issued an RFP to build the local network. To be clear, Suddenlink didn’t announce anything until after the RFP hit the streets. The community wanted broadband in the worst way, Suddenlink didn’t do jack until the RFP was real, then it looks like they panicked and moved ahead. Sometimes a kick in the ass is needed to get these guys to listen to the community. Competition is just the kick in the ass Get the Wireless Deployment Handbook today!they needed.
  • Did you do an audit? Most cities wait until after they initiate several consultants to do an audit. They should be proactive and see what they really have available ahead of time. Prior to the actual engagement of partners and consultants. However, they don’t. It adds time to the entire process. Just do it, audit what you have and align with the local utilities to see how they will cooperate with you on this venture. Let them be the heroes if that’s what it takes. Think of the residents, not yourself! What we need now is a team and to align with the local utilities is a great place to start and ask for buy-in. We need the residents, local businesses, and the local utilities to get this moving. Work to get their buy-in and resources to move ahead. If you need help, let me know. What you need to know is: 1) what assets do we have? 2) what assets do we have access to? 3) who can we partner with to make this happen? 4) what assets don’t we have, and can’t we touch? Don’t worry, the local ISPs and Cable Companies will clue you in, either in a good way or a horribly competitive way.
  • There are multiple solutions, pick one! I think you see here each city, municipality, town, or community has its own specific solution. If you’re looking for a “One size fits all” solution, good luck. It’s OK to see what others have done and copied it, but you will soon see that they all did something a little bit Pick you best plan to move forward then execute.
  • Be persistent and be nimble! It takes persistence to keep moving, but don’t be afraid to pivot and make changes. You will need to rely on the flexibility of your partners to keep things moving ahead. The only thing you should be rigid on is the result, not the way you deploy. You may need wireless to get some fiber blocks, so do it. You may need to gain access to some buildings to bypass some poles that the incumbents would not let you on, do it. Don’t hesitate to the point where it stops the project. Be nimble and open-minded. It takes some creativity to keep moving ahead. Be open in receiving suggestions.
  • It needs to be scalable and sustainable! Don’t forget that you will want to expand, so keep the option open to grow. It needs to be sustainable, do keep an eye on the payback. You want your income to cover the costs. If they don’t then next group of politicians will shut it down or make the deployment harder for contractors even if the locals get pissed. They won’t care if the system is bleeding money.
  • Don’t be afraid of failure. Sometimes you need to keep the dream

    alive even if this didn’t work. Maybe a partner or local business could step in to make this dream a reality, maybe they know something you didn’t, so be open to accepting help.

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Smart City Broadband Initiatives Part 2

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This is part two of a three-part series. This has been taken from my upcoming book, Smart City Use Cases, with Smart City Development Notes.

Facilitator

Where the city supports the rollout, maybe offers some rules and regulations that make it easier to get started and deploy, but otherwise, it hands off. Cities can still play a part in broadband Tower Safety for all your safety training!development if they have companies in their area willing to take charge and make things happen.

East Lansing, Mi, has created the “Gigabit Ready” project which pulled in many groups like Michigan State University, Lansing Economic Act Partnership, various nonprofits, commercial property managers, and anyone else who would sign up. The goal was to roll out gigabit broadband, rather obvious, right? What did they do? They looked at the LEED program and thought, let’s do that for gigabit access. This lead to the creation of the Gigabit Certified Building Program, http://statenews.com/index.php/article/2012/07/msu_lansing_on_track_for_high_speed_internet, to set guidelines and requirements for buildings to add gigabit broadband. This helped Spartan-Net, (taken from the Michigan State Spartans I assume), to partner with DTN Management Co so they could roll out broadband across East Lansing and beyond!Tower Safety for all your safety training!

Louisville, KY, worked with Louisville Fiber to create a website that allowed people to request gigabit service across Louisville. Why? So that lawmakers could see the need for speed, and it worked! Using the addresses they gathered, they built a layout of where the heaviest concentration was showing local officials the need. Louisville gave 20-year franchise agreements to BGN Networks, SiFi, and FiberTech. It also helped Louisville to be chosen as a potential Google Fiber City, (which means very little now).

College Station, TX, took a different approach. They put out an RFP to test the market. I personally hate this because when you’re on the other side, you do a lot of work that goes nowhere, but it served the city well because they got what they wanted. Suddenlink responded by promising to put in $250,000,000 into upgrading their network to make it gigabit capable, http://www.kbtx.com/home/headlines/GigaSpeed-Internet-Soon-to-be-Offered-in-BCS-276059641.html. Suddenlink got scared of having the government compete, so they got off their lazy ass and did something. College Station could motivate these guys into

action! It all worked out for the residents.

In North Carolina, the NCNGN, North Carolina Next Generation Network, formed a group of universities and cities. Wake Forest, University of North Carolina, Duke, and North Carolina State got together to work with Carrboro, Cary, Winston-Salem, Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh to make this happen. This is a large group and has deep resources in knowledge, data, and money. Who saw this as an opportunity? AT&T moved in and started deploying fiber. Then, not to be left behind, Frontier Communications started their deployment. Finally, RST Fiber got rolling as well. Then Google started to deploy. Now you have all the competition to make it happen and affordable.

Connecticut did something similar where 46 communities all got together to host a gigabit conference to share their vision to become the first Gigabit state, https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/01/16/connecticut-could-be-first-gigabit-state2/.

Who buys broadband, really?

If we look at how broadband, gigabit especially is distributed, then what would we see? It takes a community. If one person wants it, too bad. If a community wants it and they want it bad, then it’s going to happen, eventually. That is something that the cable companies missed. They were so hell-bent on selling what they had that they could have missed this opportunity. They eventually were forced to upgrade and listen. Not they see the benefits of rolling out an all internet access system. They are going to save money on tariffs to run throughout the city. They are going to start scaling back their reliance on networks. They are going to let other providers deal with paying for network access and TV show. They are not stupid.  They turned sour grapes into fine wine. Give them credit. They started looking at the big picture. At least Comcast did, and the others followed suit.

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Pricing matters!

Yes, it does! Gigabit broadband went from $7,000 a month to $70 a month in a matter of a few years. Good for consumers, tough on the 5g-deployment-plan-front-cover-3k-pixelsprovider. When we get gigabit out to the masses, it will eventually become a commodity, but you still need to get it to the people. It could be fiber or wireless. People are willing to pay, but the providers will need to offer more than just access. Years ago, it was video like TV shows and on-demand movies. Now it’s internet access, wired and wireless, and let the people choose what they want from there.

The thing was, we had to start, businesses needed broadband, and they got it. Then everyone else wanted it, and it is soon going to be everywhere. We need to be connected. The next question is how? Wired or wireless? While the smartphones are a part of our everyday lives, do they really need gigabit? Does our laptop or tablet need more than Wi-Fi? Ask yourself; my opinion changes too often.

What about Wi-Fi?

Well, we all love Wi-Fi. It is a value-add, right? Does it add value?

Well, Philadelphia and Seattle had failed Wi-Fi rollouts, highly publicized and ugly. Should we let this discourage is or should we learn from these disasters? I say we learn!

While I am a fan of what’s coming out soon, like the CBRS and expanded Wi-Fi, several cities have successful programs. Philly just didn’t have the commitment to do something like this. Luckily, they had Comcast who picked up the slack. Comcast did a great job in Philly, especially since the city had no intention of putting any money into it.

San Francisco and San Jose, Ca did a great job with their Hotspot 2.0, https://www.pcworld.com/article/2449160/free-wifi-networks-in-sf-san-jose-join-hands-through-hotspot-20.html, and Passpoint, https://www.wi-fi.org/discover-wi-fi/wi-fi-certified-passpoint, programs, really the same program. This was a big win for Ruckus, but the cities new the residents needed connectivity, so they acted and provided what people can use in both cities by registering once.

Boston rolled out the “Wicked Free Wi-Fi” covering specific neighborhoods in an effort to increase downtown broadband usage. The city already has a fiber backbone, so why not extend it to the citizens via Wi-Fi?

Blacksburg Va has an amazing Wi-Fi system that was rolled out with Get the Wireless Deployment Handbook today!crowdfunding by Techpad. Techpad is a local coworking and hacking community that raised $90,000 to make this happen.

Let’s not forget NYC, the city that rolled out Wi-Fi where the old telephone booths used to be. They put access points in every kiosk they put out. They give it away for free for tourists and residents to use to save on data usage on their smartphones. The LinkNYC project is the same as London’s LinkUK project. They both roll out the kiosks, which are really cool, have internet access and emergency call buttons, as well as Wi-Fi hotspots. Both cities rolled out hundreds of these units throughout the cities to create an amazing Wi-Fi system and an attractive kiosk that elevate it into the elite, smart city status. They look great! They make money through advertising and services. They are a win-win for any city.

Then there are all the cities, communities, and states that do nothing. Too many to mention. You know who you are. Yet, people continue to live in cities that have no initiative to improve. Why is that? I intend to move because, in my city, they do little, poor planning for the most part. In these areas is an opportunity for private companies to step up and try to get something rolling. Each city has different rules, so it may be too much effort and money to deploy in these cities. If that is the case, then you need to find a city that will work with you on economic development and build there. Don’t’ waste your time on areas that can’t or won’t work with you.

Not all Deployments are a Success!

In Seattle, it would have been city owned. The idea was to get gigabit rolled out across the city to improve internet connectivity anywhere. I don’t know what the agreement was between the city and Gigabit Squared, but it seems it fell apart. Maybe the company was too small or didn’t understand what the deployment would need or lacked commitment. It’s not clear to me what happened, but you can read more about it at https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/techflash/2014/01/seattles-fiber-deal-with-gigabit.html?page=all. The article hints that it could be more about the private company getting financing. It also hints that neither party worked on the local buy-in.

In Utah, there was a rollout y Utopia that was failing. So, Macquarie Financial took them over. This is a financial company, not an ISP or fiber company. Macquarie offered to cover the costs of the build out. However, the plan included a utility fee of $18 to $20 per household to continue. While this doesn’t sound like a lot, it is more money out-of-pocket to continue. They had opposition called, wait for it……… Unopia! How funny is that name? UNOPIA! I must admit, I like that name, but all the same, is there an alternative?  Unopia wanted to stop unnecessary fees. I get that. Why should they pay for a rollout when they don’t want the service? The lesson here is that the community didn’t want broadband bad enough, so it stalled. Learn more by looking at http://www.centervilleut.net/downloads/administration/ulct_-_utopia-macppp_faqs.april2014.pdf for this older deal.

When Incumbents fight Back!

Yes, the incumbents fight back. Not always in a way that makes sense. It would make more sense if they would just build out a network, but many go to court first. Many whine or say no one wants it. Most just criticize.

Look at Monticello, MN, and the city-owned Fibernet. The city did it to spark competition. This really ticked off the local Telco, TDS, which first took Fibernet to court, and lost! Then they decided to build their own network, which if they would have done that in the first place none of this would have happened. TDS had to get off its butt and move! Then Charter, another incumbent, slashed their prices to $60 a month for access. The moral of this example is that the city’s plan worked perfectly, they increased competition and forced the incumbents to do something, which is what they would not do before. Before Fibernet, they did nothing. Lesson learned!

Then there was Lafayette, LA, who built the network through LUS Fiber, (Lafayette Utility Service), only to be criticized by Reason.org in a statement, http://reason.org/files/municipal_broadband_lafayette.pdf, showing that they fell short of predictions and have debt. Welcome to the world of business, it takes money and patience. However, did LUS overlook the business principles when planning? Did they get a commitment from the community to purchase it? Apparently not. LUS says they are cash positive, Reason.org says they are not. To be honest, I am not sure what the real deal is here.

Let’s be honest here. Cable companies didn’t’ care about internet access, even when the customers were begging for it. They didn’t care until they had competition. They saw AT&T and Verizon offer broadband and realized that there is a market for it. Now they are becoming ISPs. I mean true ISPs are offering more and more bandwidth. Comcast rolled out Wi-Fi successfully. Now that they know there is a need and people will pay for it, they are rolling it out. That’s because they are no longer a monopoly in many areas.

Google Fiber put some fear into them. So much so that they started becoming a thorn in the side of Google. In Nashville, I talked to a friend who saw the local cable company and AT&T do all that they could to block Google from attaching the fiber to their poles. Do you blame them? NO! It’s the name of the game. While you may think this would not stop Google, it did. They began to see the realities of competition, petty fights, permitting, and pole acquisition. It costs money before you make a dime. A completely different model than what they’re used to. So, what we see now is Google Fiber on hold hoping wireless is cost-effective. They will see that site acquisition is a killer there as well. When the site acquisition costs are more than all other expenses together, you see why small cells did not roll out by the masses.

Some States Prohibit Public Networks!

What about the states, they certainly would not stop the city from building a network, would they? Oh yes, they would! As incredible as this sounds, it is a real thing. Some states, in fact, many states have laws in that stop city ownership or control broadband roll networks. Our friends at BroadbandNow has a website at https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks-by-state/ that covers states with laws about broadband.

Colorado is a great example of control. The state that allows marijuana sales would not allow their cities to partner with Google Fiber to roll out broadband. It took an election to overturn the law.

It doesn’t always work out like that. In North Carolina and Tennessee, the FCC tried to have those state broadband regulations overturned, but the FCC lost. The laws remained.

The states with these laws are Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. The laws are geared towards cities that want to own or partially own broadband networks. I think the idea is that broadband should be competitive.

This parallels what many states are doing with small cell deployments for the carriers. They have been passing state laws that allow the carriers to roll out their small cells without the local municipality slowing them down. The CTIA has done a great job lobbying the states to make life easier for the carriers at the expense of the local cities.

To be continued! 

Be smart, be safe, and pay attention!

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Smart City Broadband Initiatives Part 1

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This is part one of a three-part series. This has been taken from my upcoming book, Smart City Use Cases, with Smart City Development Notes.

Smart City Broadband Initiatives

Are you curious about some broadband initiatives that are out there? Some broadband case studies that are have rolled out? What Tower Safety for all your safety training!broadband initiatives have been successes and failures? What works better, the city owning it or a public-private partnership or private only?

I am always saying that broadband is the foundation of any smart city. Someone shared the Next Generation Network Connectivity Handbook. It’s publication by Gig.U, and it can be downloaded from http://www.gig-u.org/. Gig.U is a group that encourages the partnerships between cities and universities. They did a great job of putting together this document, published in December of 2016, showing past case studies of gigabit deployments in both wireless and wired. They cover success and failures.

Here is an outline of some of what is in this document, I highly recommend downloading it, after all, it is free!

First off, the make the point that CapEx and OpEx must be lower than the revenues coming in and it should be serving a purpose for the users. Pay attention, Value and Profit make the system sustainable! Value and profit make the system growable! It has to make money! That is something that most cities overlook because they think that the benefit will outweigh the revenue, but it will not. Revenue matters in the long run and the benefits matter up front. Up front we want buy-in and residents to love it. In the long run, we

need sustainability, so it does not bleed money in expenses.

Does it solve a problem for the

residents? So, they see the value in it? Will they pay for it? When you start a business, you need to answer these questions. Figure out the price point. Some cities can put a tax out there to pay for the system, but that is not popular in most cities.

One example that I love in this document is the cable companies. They saw broadband up to 1 Gbps as silly, but they really didn’t want to upgrade their system unless they had too. Guess what? They had to! BUT, after they got competition in first form the likes of Verizon, AT&T, and Google running fiber all over the place for a very reasonable cost to the consumer. It paid off. Now all the cable companies are touting higher speeds. They see value because they were losing market share. That’s amazing when you realize they had a monopoly for years in their neighborhoods. They had no competition, but the need for broadband and cheaper video hurt them. They thought they could control the market, but in the USE the market started swinging back with DirecTV and fiber competitors. They suddenly have to be strategic.

OK, let’s get back to the business of broadband. Once you build it, expect competition! If your business model works then more and more people will do it, just look the cable companies. While they had a monopoly for years, they got lazy. Now they have competition, and it’s hurting them. Not just from fiber, most of the younger generation realized that they have a smartphone that can do anything the cable company can do, so why pay for both? Get the picture? The landscape has changed, and if you just look at other companies that do what you do, then you only see part of the competitive landscape.

This is happening with everything because broadband is the pipe to end all pipes. It could be through fiber or wireless, but the internet has opened doors to everything unless you live in China, then it only has a few open doors and a lot of blocked websites.

There is one thing that almost any city can agree on. You need broadband in your city to compete. The question is, “How do we get 5g-deployment-plan-front-cover-3k-pixelsit here?” This is where you can look at other examples of successes and failures.

Google Fiber was supposed to be the knight in shining armor, but they stopped. They say they are going to wait for wireless, probably CBRS, but to be honest, there are plenty of bands and products that could deliver broadband now. I think that Google realized the profit model was not what they had hoped for, but they never said that officially, they just stopped, laid off a bunch of people, changed some leadership in the company, and they started saying wireless would save the day.

More on Google fiber stopping http://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article110655177.html, this is a great article because they talk about all the pain points that Google saw in the real world. TV is expensive, incumbents have more control of the poles than they ever thought possible, and maybe wireless will be easier. They also say demand is not there. I don’t get that excuse at all! It seems lame. I think they should say competition is fiercer than they thought. That is more like it. For me to sum it up, Google should have cherry-picked markets that didn’t have too much competition. They should have focused on tier 2 cities that would not only have appreciated their presence but don’t have an alternative. I live in Pennsylvania, where the cable companies rule. The rules here don’t make it an ideal state to deploy much of anything, but it has plenty of underserved cities that not only want broadband, but they need it to survive. The smaller cable companies will not make the investment until they have too. They won’t spend the money. This is an ideal target for someone like Google Fiber to deploy. But, alas, I am dreaming.

Where was I? Oh yes, economic development. Broadband is a foundation for economic development. We know that businesses need broadband to survive, but how do they get it? Many cities have a dig once policy, so if someone lays broadband, then many people need to get it in while he or she can. This really helps to get things moving and keep the competition behind you if they are late to the game. Fiber companies and deployment companies win! They can lay out the dark fiber and sell it later, not a bad model.

They also cover the 3 models that cities can look at.

Primary

This is where the city takes the lead by using public facilities to roll out the fiber and makes the investment to deploy. They use their assets to mount it. They are the provider. They may partner with someone, but generally, the city runs the business and takes the credit.

An example of this is the Chattanooga, TN, network. In 2010 the city decided to have a gigabit network available for homes. They rolled it out, and since then Volkswagen and Amazon both expanded to that area. We give the broadband credit since it was there and they took a chance to deploy. Their model served other cities like Wilson, NC, and Leverett, Ma.Get the Wireless Deployment Handbook today!

They also talk about Ammon, Id, who also built the gigabit backbone. They decided to provide the gigabit backbone because the local telco would not spend any money. The city was worried because they would need 50% of the market share to make it pay for itself. Guess what? They got 70% of the market share! When incumbents get lazy, there is a great opportunity!

Huntsville, Al, owns the electric utility. This provided them with the means and foundation to deploy broadband quickly and with an experienced player. They put in the backbone and leased it to Google Fiber. This is a win-win because Google didn’t’ have to deploy the backbone, the fiber is there and ready to use. They could move ahead quickly. The city maintained control and could make money off it right away with a large customer waiting. The negative is that people perceive the fiber being built with city funds, but it worked! They had a utility, an income plan, a customer, so why not do it? They can lease the fiber to anyone, so they are not bound to only one customer, but anyone who wants it or needs it. Awesome! Learn more at https://www.gru.com/GRUComFiberOptics.aspx.

Santa Monica, Ca built out their network without a municipal department. They did it by connecting public facilities then expanding from there. They have a dig once policy, and when someone would dig, they would lay fiber. Learn more at http://ilsr.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/santa-monica-city-net-fiber-2014-2.pdf. They took the slow approach, one that would not have any upfront costs but would remain steady and efficient.

Partial

Usually a public-private partnership, PPP, that the city supports and endorses, but the private partner will be the one doing the heavy lifting and running the business. This would rely heavily on the partner, and the city would give complete support and take some of the credit, but the private business would take the profits. Partnerships matter here more than anywhere. If the partner is an ISP (Internet Service Provider) or a nonprofit, they need to be sure they can do what they say they can do. It matters big time and reputations are key.

ISPs are everywhere, not all of them look good, but many of them provide broadband to the home or local business. They often are rooted in the community if they are local and they want to succeed. However, not all of them do, I’ll point that out farther down.

If you wonder about the nonprofit, I will give you an example of one that I worked on personally. In York, Pa, there is an organization called Crispus Attucks Association that sponsored an initiative to connect the local schools up to wireless broadband. While it went well, they are a shining example of a roll out to the schools in York County. This was one of the first of its kind. While it was later replaced with fiber, it’s an example of how a nonprofit took the lead to deploy broadband. This was over 10 years ago. Gigabit was not thought to be cost-effective back then.

Westminster, Md, is an example of how the community knew they need to do something to attract people from the cities of DC and Baltimore out to their rural area. Beautiful and scenic, but far from major highways. They knew they needed broadband, and decided on fiber.They hooked up with Ting, https://ting.com/blog/next-ting-town-westminster-md/, who was a smaller ISP eager to roll out fiber. The city looked at the fiber as infrastructure, like a building or bridge, seeing it as a city asset and letting Ting manage the operations and customer service and sales. The city has an asset, but little risk and they are not running the day-to-day business, Ting is.

South Portland, Me, laid out $150,000 upfront (http://www.southportland.org/files/7514/0682/8622/06_-_ORDER_12_-_Bid_for_dark_fiber_infrastructure.pdf) to build fiber and chose GWI, https://www.gwi.net/about/ to build it. GWI will build it and run it and give 5% of the revenue back to the city.

Cleveland, Oh, decided to work with a nonprofit called OneCommunity, http://www.onecommunity.org/big-changes-onecommunity-evolves/ who is rolled out the network and is continuing to expand into other communities to increase the reach of broadband across Ohio. They are receiving support from the US Economic Development (EDA) Grant, https://www.eda.gov/grants/, continuing the work.

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Facilitator

Where the city supports the rollout, maybe offers some rules and regulations that make it easier to get started and deploy, but otherwise, it hands off. Cities can still play a part in broadband development if they have companies in their area willing to take charge and make things happen.

East Lansing, Mi, has created the “Gigabit Ready” project which pulled in many groups like Michigan State University, Lansing Economic Act Partnership, various nonprofits, commercial property managers, and anyone else who would sign up. The goal was to roll out gigabit broadband, rather obvious, right? What did they do? They looked at the LEED program and thought, let’s do that for gigabit access. This lead to the creation of the Gigabit Certified Building Program, http://statenews.com/index.php/article/2012/07/msu_lansing_on_track_for_high_speed_internet, to set guidelines and requirements for buildings to add gigabit broadband. This helped Spartan-Net, (taken from the Michigan State Spartans I assume), to partner with DTN Management Co so they could roll out broadband across East Lansing and beyond!

Louisville, KY, worked with Louisville Fiber to create a website that allowed people to request gigabit service across Louisville. Why? So that lawmakers could see the need for speed, and it worked! Using the addresses they gathered, they built a layout of where the heaviest concentration was showing local officials the need. Louisville gave 20-year franchise agreements to BGN Networks, SiFi, and FiberTech. It also helped Louisville to be chosen as a potential Google Fiber City, (which means very little now).

College Station, TX, took a different approach. They put out an RFP to test the market. I personally hate this because when you’re on the other side, you do a lot of work that goes nowhere, but it served the city well because they got what they wanted. Suddenlink responded by promising to put in $250,000,000 into upgrading their network to make it gigabit capable, http://www.kbtx.com/home/headlines/GigaSpeed-Internet-Soon-to-be-Offered-in-BCS-276059641.html. Suddenlink got scared of having the government compete, so they got off their lazy ass and did something. College Station could motivate these guys into action! It all worked out for the residents.

In North Carolina, the NCNGN, North Carolina Next Generation Network, formed a group of universities and cities. Wake Forest, University of North Carolina, Duke, and North Carolina State got together to work with Carrboro, Cary, Winston-Salem, Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh to make this happen. This is a large group and has deep resources in knowledge, data, and money. Who saw this as an opportunity? AT&T moved in and started deploying fiber. Then, not to be left behind, Frontier Communications started their deployment. Finally, RST Fiber got rolling as well. Then Google started to deploy. Now you have all the competition to make it happen and affordable.

Connecticut did something similar where 46 communities all got together to host a gigabit conference to share their vision to become the first Gigabit state, https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/01/16/connecticut-could-be-first-gigabit-state2/.

To be continued! 

 

Be smart, be safe, and pay attention!

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Building your own Private LTE Network

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The great thing about 5G is that we will soon see private LTE networks. How is this possible? Because we finally have spectrum open to businesses everywhere.  We already have license-free spectrum in 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz that we currently use for Wi-Fi. The FCC is going to allow users to use LTE in that spectrum. The issue is sharing the spectrum. It’s not efficient in public places. Where you will see it make a real difference is in your home. Suddenly when the devices have LTE, you can install a private LTE license free network in your home. That is cool.

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Now, imagine that you can build a licensed LTE network for your small business or to serve your IOT needs to for very high security on your device? You could have your device registered with an SAS company to coordinate your CBRS spectrum so that it’s your spectrum in that building, office park, or wherever. You could even use it on your smartphones when they add that spectrum to their RF boards. This is expected to happen in 2018.

Why Private LTE?

If you want a fast and reliable network, then a private LTE network is the way to go. You could improve security by going with a licensed carrier. That is why the CBRS spectrum will be a good fit. You can easily grab a lightly licensed spectrum for your personal use, and it will make your network very secure. If you need the speed and reliability that Wi-Fi may not provide, then this is a good alternative.

Why would I want a private LTE system?

The big thing now is the industrial IOT functions. This is where you may have a manufacturing plant or a warehouse where the latency and reliability are critical. This is an IOT function where IOT would make a difference, and it could change the way your machines communicate. It would be dedicated to your specific purpose.

I would like to say that your devices would have it but that is about a year away. The latest iPhone did not have this spectrum in it nor did it have the 600MHz spectrum that T-Mobile is building out now. iPhone appears behind the latest technology spectrum.

However, someday all devices will have the CBRS spectrum in them, and your device can hand off to your secure internal network and then back to the carrier’s network, in theory anyway. The idea is that we can do so much more with our devices that could be dedicated to our specific business. That is the dream that we can run our specific applications that matter to our business. Let’s say on our tablets. If you want a model, look at any scanner system for inventory, they use this now to scan everything. Imagine when we can put applications that require more bandwidth on smaller devices and take them anywhere. Our smartphone is like that now but on the carrier’s network and Wi-Fi.

Wi-Fi serves a great purpose, but security has been the issue. If we can dedicate a specific channel in the CBRS to a specific function on your smartphone, it will be very secure. It all depends on what your priority will be to achieve your networking goal. Is it easy access, security, functionality, or all 3?

What is the CBRS?

The citizens broadband Radio spectrum. This is currently specific to the United States, but it is going to open everywhere if it’s successful. US CBRS is the 3.5GHz band, which runs from 3550 to 3700 MHz band. CBRS stands for Citizens Broadband Radio Service (in remembrance of the CB, Citizens Band). It is a licensed spectrum. There is Military radar, and Earth stations that use this spectrum that is grandfathered in and have priority access. That will not change. There will be a Spectrum Allocation System (SAS). Currently in the US only, but Europe is looking to follow suit with Licensed Shared Access, (LSA).

The spectrum is 3.65GHz to 3.7GHz which was used for WiMAX. Now the FCC is opening that spectrum and an addition 150MHz spectrum for 3 types of users.

What the SAS will manage:

  • incumbent access including the federal government and satellite providers.
  • priority access licenses (PAL) which are 7 10MHz licenses to be awarded to the highest bidders. PALs will be protected from the GAA users. PAL will include commercial users like carriers, rural operators, are a 3-year license with only 1 renewal term allowed now, and will be in the 3500 to 3650 portion of the spectrum. One licensee can hold only 4 PAL licenses.5g-deployment-plan-front-cover-3k-pixels
  • general access user, (GAA) which is “Licensed by rule” which requires the rules to be followed. This will be dedicated in the 3650 to 3750 MHz portion of the band.
  • A PAL may gain additional GAA spectrum.
  • Companies that currently have this spectrum licenses will be able to keep their This was used for WiMAX in the past. Now it will be LTE focused.
  • Licensing will be done by the Spectrum Allocation System, (SAS), which is a group that can charge for these services, currently being led by Google and Federated Wireless.
  • Hardware vendors include SpiderCloud, Ruckus, Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung, ip.access, and Acceleron.

The 3 tiers are:

  • Incumbent access – this is for users that are already using this spectrum for the military, ground stations, government, and so on. They will be protected.
  • Priority Access Licenses (PAL) – this is for anyone who is willing to pay a premium to own 10 MHz of spectrum. The current model is for 3 years with one renewal, that could change.
  • General Authorized Access (GAA) – this is for anyone who wants to use it if they have an authorized device that will connect to the SAS, Spectrum Allocation Service, and accept the assigned frequencies. You must complete a questionnaire and pay a small subscription fee, but it’s going to very reasonable.

The key here is that the SAS will coordinate all users, protect the PAL users and the incumbents.

No PAL users will be on the lower spectrum, and no GAA will be in the upper spectrum.

PAL users will most likely be the carriers or anyone who is willing to pay for dedicated spectrum for data applications, like broadband, IOT, VOIP, or anything that could be a wide area densification Get the Wireless Deployment Handbook today!project.

GAA users could be for anyone in a building doing any type of LTE network. This could be private and secure coverage in a building or IOT applications or manufacturing applications that require very low latency. A private LTE network on a lightly licensed network.

A PAL can grab GAA spectrum but a GAA can’t grab PAL spectrum.

While the GAA users should not interfere with each other, it could happen, not much you can do.

All users need to comply with the FCC rules.

Your Private LTE Network

You can use the licensed or unlicensed spectrum to build your own private LTE network. This will be part of the 5G ecosystem. It could be a separate network slice, from my perspective.

You will need:

  • A mini-core to control your systems and to be the interface to the internet.
  • Radios that are on the band and spread throughout your little area.
  • What will they control? Devices, smartphones, laptops? What will they connect?
  • User Equipment which is the end user’s device. It could be a card to interface with your device if doing IOT. It could be your smartphone, which should have this spectrum in it starting in 2018. Maybe your laptop will be able to connect or have a USB interface that could connect.

Now you see that there is a way to get that private LTE network, but where do you get the parts for a CBRS network? Look at the list below:

  • Ruckus makes radios and a small core.
  • SpiderCloud also makes radios and a small core.
  • Look to Federated Wireless to see that already have run trials, http://www.federatedwireless.com/tag/3-5-ghz/
  • Any major OEM has the equipment, like Nokia, Ericsson, or Samsung, but they generally have little interest in helping a smaller business with something like that. That’s been my experience.
  • As for end-user devices, I am still trying to figure that one out.

There you go, figure it out. It’s so easy a wireless guy can do it. Maybe an IT guy can do it, but who knows.

Resources:

Tower Safety and Instruction has online training and eBooksTower Safety for all your safety training! at http://teltech-college.com/ where you can get drone, tower, safety, 5G, and deployment material on your laptop! TSI, making the best better.

Be smart, be safe, and pay attention!

See Ya!

How do you plan goals? Now you can plan 5 Weeks at a time! The 5-week Planning Journal, (click here), available now in paperback from Amazon!

 

 

 

 

SOW Training Cover

Do you know what to put in your SOW, the details needed to get paid for milestones or job completion? 

 

Putting together your smart city tech solutions, planning, development, and more….TechFecta! Guiding you to a better plan through consulting!

The foundations below do beautiful work, helping families in their time of need. Climbers often get seriously injured or die on the job. The foundations below support those families in their time of greatest need! 

official logo

Hubble Foundation helps the families of climbers in a time of need and beyond with financial support and counseling!

tower-family-foundation-e1447069656192

Tower Family Foundation supports the families of tower climbers at the time of crisis when a climber falls with financial assistance and more.

 

iPhone X Missing Spectrum & Technology!

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Did anyone notice that the latest iPhone did not have 600MHz in it that T-Mobile is rolling out? What is that about. It doesn’t have the CBRS spectrum in it either! WHAT?

The iPhone X is an eXample of what not to do! It’s a failed eXperiment! It’s a loser at any X games. It’s an eXtreme eXample of a throwback device! If they wanted a throwback, they should have 5g-deployment-plan-front-cover-3k-pixelsmade it the X flip phone, like the devices Nextel had. Xtreme Fail! Xtreme disappointment!

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OK, that’s out of my system, let’s move on.

EPIC X FAIL!

Why would they not put in the latest spectrum? Now that they released this they already have a gaping hole in the device! Oh sure, it has facial recognition, when it works, great.

What’s missing?

  • T-Mobile is looking to be in band 71, 600MHz, but there is no device to support it.
  • The CBRS is 3.5GHz, and that’s band 48.
  • No LAA availability for LTE!

Why does this matter?

Because the future of LTE will rely on new spectrum to get the speeds they need to deliver the 5G broadband that we expect. They matter because LTE will rely on LAA and HPUE and gigabit capability to get the broadband that people want and need. It is how we expect to get more form our devices, T-Mobile isn’t building out 600MHz just so they can stare at the shiny new radio heads and antennas! They want to deliver the best bandwidth they can to their customers. They want to maximize every site so that the end-user, the customer, YOU, are satisfied with your device.

Listen, if you’re looking at advancing the bandwidth to your device, then look at the device! Apple just showed that their primary motivation is the facial recognition and apps, so that get you addicted to the device itself!  But without the bandwidth to serve you, what good is it? You need spectrum. You need the support system to get spectrum. The carriers are doing all that they can to get that bandwidth maximized to your device, wouldn’t it be nice if Apple would reciprocate? They need to get their crap together and Tower Safety for all your safety training!remember that they are a technology company first and foremost. All I can ask is, “is that what Steve Jobs would have done?” Would he have put the technology on a back burner just to release a new device? I think we all know the answer to that.

Let’s see what Samsung will do. This is their big chance to jump ahead and show us what they can do. Maybe Google will release something great when they take over HTC. Google has a large investment in CBRS, at least in time. They may push it harder than anyone.

To me, Apple is putting all its eggs in the Wi-Fi basket. Maybe that is their way to keep the connection alive. Maybe they could care less about the new spectrum coming out or the coverage that the carriers are trying to build. Maybe Apple could care less about T-Mobile’s sales of their devices. I don’t know.Get the Wireless Deployment Handbook today!

To be honest, I was an Apple fan, but now I see them changing into a typical supplier, worried about moving units on the short-term flash and less about building something that has longevity and evolution capability.

I was disappointed, but hey, I am a tech guy, Apple no longer wants to appeal to us anymore, at least that is how I am reading this. All I can say is “LET DOWN!”

Resources:

Be smart, be safe, and pay attention!

See Ya!

Tower Safety and Instruction has online training and eBooksTower Safety for all your safety training! at http://teltech-college.com/ where you can get drone, tower, safety, 5G, and deployment material on your laptop! TSI, making the best better.

How do you plan goals? Now you can plan 5 Weeks at a time! The 5-week Planning Journal, (click here), available now in paperback from Amazon!

 

 

 

 

SOW Training Cover

Do you know what to put in your SOW, the details needed to get paid for milestones or job completion? 

 

Putting together your smart city tech solutions, planning, development, and more….TechFecta! Guiding you to a better plan through consulting!

The foundations below do beautiful work, helping families in their time of need. Climbers often get seriously injured or die on the job. The foundations below support those families in their time of greatest need! 

official logo

Hubble Foundation helps the families of climbers in a time of need and beyond with financial support and counseling!

tower-family-foundation-e1447069656192

Tower Family Foundation supports the families of tower climbers at the time of crisis when a climber falls with financial assistance and more.